2017 Annual Meeting: Call for Organized Session Proposals

LSA members are encouraged to consider submitting proposals for an Organized Session at the 2017 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Austin, TX from January 5-8. An organized session is an excellent opportunity to present a group of similarly-focused presentations on a wide variety of topics and in a wide variety of formats. LSA Committees and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are also encouraged to submit proposals on topics falling under their purview. Program Committee Chairs are available to discuss ideas for possible organized session topics.

Organized sessions may be on any linguistic topic that would be of interest to meeting attendees (e.g. characteristics of a particular language family; trends and advances in a particular subfield of linguistics; current debates on a particular research topic). They may also address topics of interest to particular groups of attendees (e.g. students, hopeful book authors, prospective grant-writers, policy advisors). They may have a theoretical or a pragmatic focus. Graduate students and junior faculty are particularly invited to submit proposals on professional development topics.

A session may take many forms: symposium, workshop, tutorial, or another form as appropriate. It may be either 1 hour and 30 minutes or 3 hours in length. Specific examples are given below.

Directions for Submission of Proposals

Deadline for receipt of final proposal: Monday, May 16 2016, 11:59 PM U.S. Eastern Time. Technical support will not be available after 3:00 PM on Monday. Organizers must submit final proposals by this May date. Note that the proposal received in May must be a final one, with all presentations and speakers accounted for. There will not be an opportunity for additional feedback from the Program Committee, nor will there be any later submission date. Program Committee Chairs are available for consultation at any time before the deadline (see e-mail addresses below). Proposals submitted after the May 16th final deadline will not be considered.

Possible Session Formats• Symposium: several presentations on a single topic;• Tutorial: intensive instruction in some subfield of linguistics or a related field;• Workshop: on a specific theme or issue, with time for responses and debate/discussion planned in, perhaps with a particular goal in mind;• Datablitz: a session composed of many very short presentations (10 mins each, for example) highlighting a broad range of ongoing work on a single topic;• Sessions of any other kind with a clear, specific and coherent rationale.

Requirements for Submission

The completed proposal should be submitted by the deadline, in a single .pdf document, to drobinson@lsadc.org. The proposal should include the following information: • Title of Session• Type of Session (Symposium, Tutorial, etc.)• Name, affiliation and e-mail address of organizer(s)• Length of session (1 hour 30 minutes or 3 hours)• LSA Committee, SIG, or other entity on behalf of which the proposal is being submitted, if applicable• Session Abstract, approximately 1000 words in length• Detailed Session information: please provide, in the order in which they will occur in the session, the individuals presenters’ names, affiliations, roles (paper presenter, introducer, moderator, discussant, etc.) and, for each presentation, a 200-500 word abstract.

Ideally, organized session timetables should be aligned as much as possible with the paper schedules in the regular sessions. These are 20-minute papers, starting on the hour and half-hour, with 10 minutes of discussion following. This allows for some traffic between regular sessions and organized sessions, and may improve attendance. It is not required, however. The committee strongly encourages organizers to consider the submission of sessions in the 1 hr 30 minute format, which allows us to accept more sessions. If three hours is the appropriate length for your session, however, do not hesitate to ask for it.

Please also note the following:• Individual papers must not have already appeared in print, nor may they appear in print before the 2017 Annual Meeting.• Abstracts of individual papers will be reviewed for quality according to the same criteria applied to abstracts of papers and posters presented outside of organized sessions. In order to maximize the chances that your organized session will be accepted, please ask participants to consult the 2017 Annual Meeting abstract guidelines for more information when preparing their abstracts.• Each participant in the organized session must be a member of the LSA. Nonmembers may join here.• Proposals for organized sessions are not reviewed anonymously; please be sure to include your name and affiliation on the proposal as well as the names and affiliations for the presenters on their respective abstracts.• All meeting rooms will be equipped with microphones, an LCD projector, a screen, and internet access for presenter. • Approximate timetable for organized session proposals, and further requirements for accepted proposals: May 16: deadline for receipt of final proposals - Late June: notification of acceptance/non-acceptance of proposals. For accepted session proposals only: - Early October: submit a 1-page description of the organized session and a 150-word abstract of each participant's presentation for inclusion in the Meeting Handbook.

Frequently Asked Questions

What We Do

The mission of the LSA is to advance the scientific study of language. The LSA aspires to a world in which the essential nature of language and its central role in human life is well understood. » Read more about us